Pallavi had told me a lot about George Town, having visited it before. She said, "the food is really good, and it has its own charm about it." It really does, but in a very different way from its Melacca counterpart. We stayed in the Chinatown area, which, for once, actually feels like Chinatown. Every lane is narrow, surrounded by "heritage pre-war shop-houses" and heritage hotels. There are shrines & temples tucked around corners and in lane ways. They even have their own colonial district and a proper Little India. We stayed in our first heritage hotel and decided, although it was nice, to see if we could find something a bit more in our backpacker budget.
We also got an unexpected treat on Sunday when our guest house had its official launch party. The theme of the night was 'nonya.' Our hosts made a whole buffet of traditional nonya foods (I obviously tried to sample as many of them as I could). They also had nonya performers! Some local celebrity named Annie Lin, who is this 80 something year old 'pure blood nonya,' who has been in movies and on tv, etc was the guest of honor. Then, a whole troop of women dressed in nonya finest came in to dance! We learned from one of them that this is a group of older women who get together to practice, perform, and share nonya traditional dance. The younger folk aren't as interested, as each outfit can cost up to $1000. The outfits are all handmade from head to toe. Each shoe is embroidered with beads. Each sarong is patterned with beautiful designs. Each top has elegant brocade-work. Then, to top it off, diamond brochures and earrings, and a yellow flower behind the left ear. We also learned there is quite the nonya-off competition between Penang nonya and Malacca nonya. Also, nonyans do not appreciate false impersonators. As one whispered to us, "there are a lot of Chinese who wear these dresses, but they are NOT nonya.'
It was a blast. But now it's time to head off to Thailand.
We ended up finding a heritage hotel that met our criteria just a block down the road, run by 3 siblings, that just opened a few days ago. It's so fantastic to be a part of a new opening. You can feel their excitement as they stay up all hours of the night, hammering, moving, cleaning to prepare for their opening party on the Sunday when we are here. They also go out of their way to make us coffee, make sure we are comfortable, and even carry trays of our food upstairs for us. One day we came back from dinner, wanting to try some Nonya sweets (like in Malacca, a population of Chinese who emigrated to Malaysia in the 14th century). We asked one of the siblings, Jack, where we could go to get some sweets. We were saddened by the fact the place to purchase the Nonya sweets was too far to walk in the rain. Jack offered to go and get some sweets for us, which we politely declined. Low and behold, when we saw Jack again, he came baring a whole plate of Nonya sweets he had picked up for us! We just have to wait until we can write them up on Trip Advisor.
In between meals, we have spent our days just exploring the city. In 2012, some Lithuanian artist decided to start some cultural street art program here. The street art mixes dimensions, coming 2D animation with 3D real artifacts. For example, he'll have a swing set against a wall, and then paint two children on it. Then there is metal artwork around different places, each with a cartoon and a historical description about the area. Between the mixed art & the metal art, there are roughly 40 pieces of art to try to spot around the city. It's such a brilliant way to get people walking around the streets and interacting with the city. Everybody poses with the art. I'll work on getting pics up someday so people can see it.
Unfortunately, Pallavi's been a bit under the weather, so we haven't really explored the whole city. However, that's alright. This city is the kind that you can just take it easy in and explore as you want. Plus, we've been pushing pretty hard over the past week or so, so it's fine to just stay in and catch up on all of the free iTunes shows we can find and download (Last Alaskans is pretty good, btw).
We also got an unexpected treat on Sunday when our guest house had its official launch party. The theme of the night was 'nonya.' Our hosts made a whole buffet of traditional nonya foods (I obviously tried to sample as many of them as I could). They also had nonya performers! Some local celebrity named Annie Lin, who is this 80 something year old 'pure blood nonya,' who has been in movies and on tv, etc was the guest of honor. Then, a whole troop of women dressed in nonya finest came in to dance! We learned from one of them that this is a group of older women who get together to practice, perform, and share nonya traditional dance. The younger folk aren't as interested, as each outfit can cost up to $1000. The outfits are all handmade from head to toe. Each shoe is embroidered with beads. Each sarong is patterned with beautiful designs. Each top has elegant brocade-work. Then, to top it off, diamond brochures and earrings, and a yellow flower behind the left ear. We also learned there is quite the nonya-off competition between Penang nonya and Malacca nonya. Also, nonyans do not appreciate false impersonators. As one whispered to us, "there are a lot of Chinese who wear these dresses, but they are NOT nonya.'
It was a blast. But now it's time to head off to Thailand.
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